


a castle cannot be built on air

by sentential (fallencrest)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Arranged Marriage, F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-23
Updated: 2011-10-23
Packaged: 2017-10-24 21:52:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/268270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallencrest/pseuds/sentential
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven kisses in Ned and Catelyn's marriage, showing how a political match becomes a loving relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a castle cannot be built on air

ONE  
The first kiss probably doesn’t even count. It’s not a romantic kiss or even a dutiful one.

It’s after the news of Brandon’s death. It’s the first time she sees him. He’s come from the Eyrie, come to do the heir’s duties, and he visits her.

They both know what Brandon’s death means. They know that the marriage pact, between her and Brandon, which was meant to join their houses, will not end with the death of her betrothed. She knows that she will marry him, this younger brother who has some of Brandon’s look but none of his charm — or so she thinks, then.

He says “I’m sorry, my lady Catelyn, I am terribly—” but his propriety is cut off by her tears. (She should not have cried.)

He puts a hand on her upper arm, as if to soothe and comfort, and she steps forward into his embrace and he holds her to his chest as she cries.

For a minute, both of them forget about the betrothal, about how they will be forced to marry, and they grieve. She cries and he closes his eyes, as if that is all that’s needed to stopper his own tears. He kisses the top of her head, a fatherly, protective gesture, and when she pulls away, their eyes meet and speak of the revenge they both wish to have against their king.

 

TWO  
She dreads the kiss that is sure to follow the exchange of cloaks at their wedding. She had once treasured the idea of having the direwolf of Stark draped over her shoulders but that was when she’d thought another man would put it there.

The hands which fasten the white cloak around her shoulders are not the tender, knowing hands of a lover: they are, instead, the hands of a cautious, diligent, and unsure boy who does not wish to touch her more than she would like. The kiss is the same.

He kisses her tentatively, softly, and briefly. It might have been a kiss bestowed by some distinguished visitor to her father’s castle, had it not been on the lips.

For a long time, she resents the kiss, and the way he treats her at the bedding. For a long time, she thinks it is an insult, the way he says to her: “we do not have to, yet, if you do not wish it. We are married so we must needs share a marriage bed, however—”

She is a fool for the longest time.

What Catelyn sees in Eddard Stark’s kindness is a lack of love for her. She is not afraid of him, this man she has been made to marry. She had never feared that he would mistreat her. She only fears that he does not love her or care for her and, in his kindness, she imagines she sees a lack of love. She will tell herself, later, that this was blindness in her but it is not. His kindness is not love — he would have been kind to any girl he had been forced to take to wife — but love will supplant it, all the same.

 

THREE  
They do their duty on their wedding night. Duty is, probably, the proper word for what they do.

Catelyn knows that she should show more of a maiden’s shame. (She has enough of it, at least.) But her husband’s reluctance makes her a little bolder than she might have been. She guides his hands and whispers to him.

The jeering crowd outside the bedchamber are so loud that they certainly drown out any of the sounds within. It is quiet within the room in spite of this, though there is a moment when Catelyn cries out because it hurts. (She had been told that it would hurt but the pain still surprises her.) Ned stills then, and meets her eyes, and she has to tell him it’s alright more than once before he’ll carry on.

The one thing he does which is not entirely dutiful, that night, is to kiss her. As he moves on top of her, he kisses her neck and her collarbone and all along her shoulders. His hair tickles her skin as he does it and she cannot see his face. She could almost pretend he was Brandon. She almost does.

 

FOUIR  
Her lord husband stays in Riverrun for only a few days after their marriage, scarcely a full fortnight. Robert Barratheon wants Ned and his men back in the field as soon as possible, now that their alliance with the lords of the Riverlands has been sealed. She sees little and less of her husband during these few days. He is always meeting with his bannermen and dealing with their supplies and other matters more important than his bride.

The night before Ned leaves to go to war against the king is probably the first night that Catelyn feels anything for him. He is about to go to war. He is about to kill the king who killed the man she loved. Until that night, all they had done abed was duty but, that night, Catelyn crawls on top of her husband with hunger in her eyes.

Desire is in their marriage bed, that night, for the first time. It might not be the right kind of desire, but it has them in its grasp, and they both hold so tight to one another that they leave bruises and nail marks in each other’s skin.

“Kill them,” she says, afterwards, with a boldness she’d not thought she had, “the Mad King and everyone who let them do this.” ‘This’ was the murder of Brandon Stark, the boy she’d loved, the thing that had brought them together. ‘This’ is their marriage, and the broken look in Ned’s eyes and his discomfort at holding a title which he had never expected to inherit.

Ned rolls on top of her, eyes fiercer than she’s ever seen them, and he says “I will” before he kisses her.

 

FIVE  
He comes back, whole, from the war. He comes back and he does not boast of his victories. (She has heard the tales already, from every man who’s passed through the castle, but she would still not mind having them again from Ned’s own lips.)

First, he just takes her in his arms. She holds on tight to him because he’s come back and the Mad King is dead, because Brandon is avenged, and because he’s come back whole and she’d almost grown to love him, in his absence.

“Our son,” he says, “show me our boy.” She had written to him all about Robb, how he had the Tully colouring, which she had not expected, and how he was growing so fast, so fast that he would not believe it.

She takes him to the boy, who is asleep, and when they look upon him she thinks that perhaps they will be a family, after all. Ned looks upon his son with such tenderness that Catelyn kisses Ned’s cheek and hopes.

Her hopes live little longer than a heartbeat.

“Cat,” he says, “I—”

She slaps him, clean across the face, when he shows her the bastard boy, Jon Snow.

 

SIX  
In Winterfell, she feels more alone than she ever has in her life but Ned does his best to make her feel at home. He has the kitchen staff learn to cook dishes from the Riverlands and she does her best to be grateful and not to speak of how none of them ever tastes quite as it should. When he sees her in a sorrowful mood, he does his best to offer her some comfort. Once, he offers to have some female companions brought to Winterfell for her. Though she declines his offer, he still has a Septa brought to live at Winterfell for the first time in generations.

“Your gods are the Seven,” he says, “you should keep them as you see fit and Septa Mordane will be there for you, if you should have need of her.”

Catelyn apologises to the Septa, for being the cause of her being sent so far North but Septa Mordane is kind and claims it is an honour to serve the great house of Stark.

Every little kindness makes Catelyn feel a little worse and it is not, actually, so very long before Ned realises this.

“I am supposed to offer _you_ comfort, my lord,” Catelyn says, when he asks her, “not the other way around.”

It is not long after that, that Ned starts to tell her she looks beautiful. It is a new strategy, she knows, a new way to try to make her feel comfortable and at home. She is still wary of her husband’s kindness. But, one day, with the bright sunlight pouring in across her through the window, he kisses her when he says it.

He says, “you look beautiful, this morning, my lady Catelyn,” and he places one hand on the back of her head, in her auburn hair, and he kisses her. The kiss is long and slow and sweet. It is not the insistent kiss of desire — which is what she might have expected from any other man — instead it is devoted and responsive to the way she places her own hands on his back.

Winterfell feels more like home then, than it ever had before.

 

SEVEN  
It is not until Sansa is born that Catelyn feels the love she ought to have felt for Ned, all along.

Sansa is a few weeks old and she is asleep, finally asleep, when Ned looks at Catelyn, puts an arm around her shoulder and pulls her in against his side. He kisses her forehead and it’s almost like that first time — devoid of all the weight of a marriage neither of them had asked for. She closes her eyes and thinks that this is home, finally home.

**Author's Note:**

> First posted [here](http://philstar22.livejournal.com/76193.html?thread=200865&style=mine#t200865) at a prompt meme on LJ.


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